Conferencing for meetings

My question is: What solutions would you suggest for having an interactive conference call for Stake High Council or Stake Council meetings?

This is not necessarily a Building-to-Building issue, but it is related, and has briefly been discussed in the following threads:

Web based tech talk: http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1039
Tech chats: http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?t=454
Streaming versus 2-way conferencing: http://tech.lds.org/forum/showthread.php?t=48

We have members who live 2 hours away from the Stake Center and with economic issues, some members may be strapped to make the trip for meetings as often as usual. I was curious to see what options others might have to allow high-quality, interactive communication at a low or even free price. Our Stake Center has Internet.

a) We have tried Skype for 1 or 2 people calling in.
b) We have had a cell phone as the speakerphone in the middle of the table (not too effective)

Any suggestions or discussion? What about allowing 6+ people to call in? What would be a good solution?

Two ideas might help:

Have you seen the conferencing speakerphone units designed to be used in professional conference rooms? The modern units work quite well. Some of them look like three-handled boomerangs. Please email or PM me for the name of one brand I am aware of.

There are teleconferencing bridge companies. If I understand correctly, you arrange for a conference at a specific date and time. The company gives you a phone number and a password. Participants call in. The bridges I have used only allow one person to speak at a time, but the audio balancing and gating seem to work very well.

In a former job, I participated in lots of audio teleconference calls using the bridges and the boomerang-shaped speakerphones, and they worked quite well.

A more modern potential substitute for the commercial bridge company might be to use a high-bandwidth VoIP hub with the audio balancing and gating functions implemented in software. I don't know of any existing software for that purpose, but it wouldn't be too very difficult to do. The software hub/bridge could be a participant or a non-participant in the call.

There are a lot of good free options out there for web conferencing that I like. Check these out:

Yugma - http://www.yugma.com/
DimDim - http://www.dimdim.com/

Of course, these are meant more for a presentation type interaction and not as much speaking, but it may be useful for your meetings if you are working on something that you would like everyone to see... perhaps an agenda.

There are some options availalbe for audioor webconferencing at contracted rates which might meet your needs for general meetings. These two articles on the clerk;s site explain how to get accounts and what the features are for different product offerings. We've also documented a few different usage models of how these technologies can replace travel for some meetings. We've also tried Oovoo and Skype for video conferences and both of these might be options as well.

sgerrard wrote:There are some options availalbe for audioor webconferencing at contracted rates which might meet your needs for general meetings. These two articles on the clerk;s site explain how to get accounts and what the features are for different product offerings. We've also documented a few different usage models of how these technologies can replace travel for some meetings. We've also tried Oovoo and Skype for video conferences and both of these might be options as well.

Actually, you may want to look into what the Church is offering. In the online Tech Talk a week ago presented by the Church's CIO, Joel Dehlin, it was mentioned that the Church is now offering audio conferencing solutions to the local units. He also mentioned that a video conferencing solution would be hopefully by the end of the year.

The recording of the online Tech Talk is slated to be released late next week or the beginning of the following week, with an announcement posted on the main homepage of the LDS Tech website.

mkmurray wrote:Actually, you may want to look into what the Church is offering. In the online Tech Talk a week ago presented by the Church's CIO, Joel Dehlin, it was mentioned that the Church is now offering audio conferencing solutions to the local units. He also mentioned that a video conferencing solution would be hopefully by the end of the year.

The recording of the online Tech Talk is slated to be released late next week or the beginning of the following week, with an announcement posted on the main homepage of the LDS Tech website.

Umm, sgerrard's post was referring to what the Church is offering. She mentioned the clerk.lds.org site and all her links are to documents on lds.org that are accessible from clerk.lds.org.

I realize this post is almost 4 years old, but in my forum search it comes closest to my issue: is there an audio teleconferencing for church leaders capability that is provided by or through the Church? The “audio” link might have provided some help, but it no longer takes one to a valid page—not too surprised about that.

I am aware of the PVC option, but my stake president is only interested in audio conferencing at this point.

I found information on the Wiki for audio conferencing that essentially says it is up to the local unit to set up an account with a local provider.

Under the title “Billing” says “the bill is paid for out of the same local account used for travel reimbursement or from the local unit operating budget.” However, there is no guidance that helps determine which method should be used in any given situation.

If anyone has any info beyond what’s in the Wiki, especially of Church provided capabilities, I’d be interested to hear from you.